Firing (at) a Lame Duck

Last week, Isiah Thomas was fired by the Knicks for hitting rock-bottom harder than Robert Downey, Jr. and proceeding to dig like there was oil underneath Madison Square Garden.

Wayne Krivsky was also fired last week. The reasons are a bit less apparent.

Apparently, Cincinnati Reds management was displeased with the team's 9-12 start, cited as the main reason they fired him by owner Bob Castellini, who replaced him with the Reds' recently-hired and suspiciously-situated "special assistant," Walt Jocketty.

Recent history pretty much proves that the excuse of a poor start 21 games into a season is more bogus than the hope inspired by the Kansas City Royals' fast start, recently flushed by a seven-game losing streak.

Last year, the New York Yankees were 21-29 for a day. The Colorado Rockies started 9-15 and were at one point 17-25. The Phillies? Five games under .500 after 33 games. The Chicago Cubs, in the Reds' own division, woke up one morning at 22-31. That's half the teams in last year's playoffs (three of four from the NL) and all of them started at least as poorly as the Reds did last year through 21 games.

None of those teams panicked like they had Stevie Wonder behind the wheel of the team bus and fired the GM. Of course, the Reds aren't the Yankees. Probably not even the Cubs or Phillies, especially in terms of payroll. But this is a dark-horse team that could be dangerous, a parallel in terms of young talent to the Rockies or even Diamondbacks of last year. (Not to mention my choice for a surprise contender in my last article.)

The start was said to be their worst since 2003. Of course, last year they were 10-11, and considering the number of times the previous "better" starts led to playoff births (0), it pretty much validates the notion that a team's status in April means less than a Miss Cleo prediction.

Krivsky was hired before 2006 on a team that had zero quality arms on the staff or in the bullpen, and as many recent playoff berths. So what has he done with the group in a sliver over two years at the wheel? Let me think. He:

• Traded Willy Mo Pena from a crowded outfield to grab the embattled Bronson Arroyo. Even with his early struggles this year, Arroyo has been far more valuable than Willy Mo Pena, who apparently entered witness protection after being traded to the Nationals.
• Traded a player to be named later (Jeff Stevens, anyone?) to the Indians for second baseman Brandon Phillips, who joined the 30-30 club last year. The Indians promptly notified authorities that they had been robbed.
• Picked up Josh Hamilton essentially for the price of a Lexus. An average one at that. One year later, he parlayed Hamilton's success into the Texas Rangers' top pitching prospect, Edinson Volquez. Volquez is 3-0 with a 1.21 ERA right now.
• After trading Felipe Lopez and Austin Kearns to get bullpen help from Washington in 2006, perhaps his most ridiculed trade (at least by me at the time), the two went on to produce underwhelming numbers for the Nationals. He filled the hole at short by picking up Jeff Keppinger for a rosin bag, and was watching him hit over .300 so far in '08.
• He finally got the team a closer in Francisco Cordero after its chronically bad bullpen blew 28 saves last year. That immediately equals wins, because Cordero is simply not going to blow 28 games. Of course, at the current rate, he won't get that many chances. But the chances will come, and games that would have been losses will become wins.

This is a team with an offensive lynchpin in Adam Dunn. (When will people look past the strikeouts and .250 batting average and realize the incredible value in a guy who reaches base over 38 percent of the time — career — and for the last three years has averaged 100 runs, 100 RBIs, and 40 homers? Some Reds fans are still inexplicably bitter Krivsky never traded him.) The team has never struggled to score runs for a prolonged period, and now Aaron Harang has developed into an ace and Johnny Cueto has broken onto the scene. Four quality arms, after years as a team that couldn't pitch to a little league lineup.

Granted, it hasn't been a perfectly smooth ride in the Reds' riverboat of a stadium. Krivsky wasted an occasional dollar checks on a Mike Stanton, a Real Cormier, or a Corey Paterson (manager Dusty Baker also likely had a role that one). He has a tendency to throw around a mid-level contracts here and there at players that don't deserve them, and on a small-budget team like the Reds, that can hurt.

But every GM has his trades or contracts he'd rather not discuss. In terms of throwing around GDPs of small nations at busts and trading away players that turned into superstars, Krivsky's closet is well below average with its skeleton count. And we aren't talking Juan Pierre dollar-to-talent ratios here.

No, neither personnel moves nor meaningless early losses were tipping points for cutting a guy's term short at 26 months when it takes years to build a winner, especially from what he started with. Jocketty was hired as "special assistant to the GM" this offseason, and if it wasn't obvious before, it is clear with anvil-level bluntness that the title was really "assistant until-we-can-find a-legit-reason-to-fire-Krivsky" GM. You wonder what would have happened if the Reds started 15-6.

Jocketty is too big a name to sit second chair at an organization that his teams regularly finished about three floors above in the standings while with the Cardinals, albeit with a little larger payroll. To even bring him on staff with someone else still in the GM chair was effectively a firing to begin with.

Personal problems between Castellini and Krivsky have been rumored, and while that will never be fully reported, it seems likely such differences were a factor. Another culprit? Simple owner's impatience and over-meddling, all too common in sports. The Steinbrenner theory of win-now-or-be-fired is a close second behind blatant financial neglect on the list of "worst ways to run a franchise."

But more likely, Castellini saw an opportunity to grab a guy like Jocketty, and felt like a proven GM was worth grabbing and stashing away under a bogus "advisor" title until he could find a good reason to shake his etch-a-sketch clean and hand it to his buddy Walt.

Either way, to hire Krivsky's replacement while leaving him in office was a classless move. If they never intended to give him a chance, firing him before the season was the least the Reds could have done.

Jocketty, who built a perennial winner in St. Louis, will not tear down the Reds, and the team may well appear to rebound because of him, making a run for the playoffs. Hopefully, when they do, Jocketty and Castellini will at least send Krivsky a thank you card. Because it's doubtful he gets the apology he deserves.